How to Successfully Design a Children’s Playroom That Will Be Functional, Yet Aesthetically Pleasing

Decorating your child’s room can be complicated. You want it to be functional, but at the same time, a part of you wants to impress your child’s friend’s parents. This is common as a parent. It is tough, because you want the room to look trendy and tasteful, but you also don’t want to have to worry about if your children are drawing all over the furniture. Here are some tips that can help you design a beautiful, yet practical playroom.

To help your kids stay organized, keep things at their height. Closet storage, benches and coat racks will all be used more often if kids can get to them easily. Try creating a continuous art center by using wainscoting in a room and painting the wall below with chalkboard paint. You can get chalkboard paint in the color of your choice. Simply paint up to a chair rail or install your own and paint below.

Most craft and hobby stores sell an additive to paint that allows it to glow in the dark. Try painting stars and a moon on your child’s ceiling or a cityscape around the edge of the room. This will get them excited about turning out the lights at night. A mural of different colored leaves, a birdhouse, and birds has been painted on a green wall in view of a wood crib that has two storage drawers. Cream-colored curtains hang on either side of the mural. Removable wall transfers are becoming increasingly affordable and the range of patterns and styles grows every day. Call them temporary wall tattoos and let your kid have fun decorating their room in a way you know you won’t have to fix later. 

Kids are notorious collectors, so make collecting easy. Pictures and postcards don’t always have to be stuck to a corkboard. Try hanging them from strings in front of a window or clipping them to a string along the wall to create an interactive border in a room. All kids want display space. Galvanized metal is fairly inexpensive and can be purchased in sheets at most home improvement stores. Just mount on the wall and you have an instant magnetic board. 

Check your local art and crafts store for peel-and-stick cork. You can cut out any shape, simply peel off the backing and attach to any wall for fun pin-up space. Rather than a traditional growth chart put a border around the room. Each month you can use non-toxic, water-based paint to put the child’s handprint in the border. Watch them grow together.

Be sure to include multiple kinds of lighting in a kid’s room. Overall lighting is a necessity but so is a reading light. It may even help them find the bathroom in the middle of the night. If you are painting a dresser or other furniture you know the child will grow out of be sure to let them help. The child could also put their signature on it with personal handprints or fingerprints for a polka-dot design.

2 comments

  1. Don’t put too much lighting in a children’s room..they’ll knock most of them over. Just a word of caution. Most of the lighting should come from the ceiling; of course, it’s okay to have a lamp or two (at the most). Trust me on this one; safety wise, most of the lighting should come from above.

  2. Good to know. In retrospect, that makes sense. At first I was thinking of putting a floor lamp, but you make a good point. That might be the worst lighting idea of all, as it could topple over and hit my son’s head. It’s crazy how dangerous practical furniture is to small children.

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